1. Zen Shin Do Karate2. Yes. For me, sparing is an essential part of the club.3. Contact and rules vary according to who is teaching. Normally light contact with a set of rules but sometimes medium with very few rules. Occasionally we do 'anything goes' where you are allowed to attack any person in the dojo who is fighting. This is great for teaching about peripheral vision.

1. Isshinryu Karate2. Yes, differant degrees of sparring are used for belt tests3. We do what we call "Tag Sparring" Which is an open hand just touch and go sparring all the way up to medium to hard contact but never full where we whip out the pads and go to town.

"Hard" Kumite is full contact sparring, which occurs at the end of most classes.

There are no pads, groin protectors, headgear, mouthguard, or any other foreign objects, except a gi and a belt to hold it together. Sometimes, however, unpadded leather gloves are used, if one's hand has an open cut, to keep from negligently spreading blood over the gi of ones opponent (which is considered disrespectful).

During "Hard" kumite, each student tries to not hit the head, groin or knees, which happens every now and then unintentionally.

New students start kumite early on. The nature of "Hard" kumite is that junior goes against senior. Senior tries to not hit junior harder than junior has been hit before, plus just a little more force to give junior the opportunity to grow (get stronger by being able to take heavier and heavier blows).

Junior, on the other hand, is expected to hit senior as hard as he or she possibly can, while still maintaining proper form.

As junior grows, senior grows as well, since he or she is taking much more punishment than he or she is giving.

There is also "slow kumite", every once in a while, which is slow motion with light contact.

Nurb, you may want to consider training Kishi Karate...it sounds right up your alley...

Unfortunately, there are only three Kishi Karate dojos in the world, Shinjo, Japan; NYC; or, Millbrook, New York.

There's probably less than two dozen students in the World who train Kishi Karate.

I live near San Francisco; so, if Nurb, or anyone else who is interested, wants to practice some of what I have learned in this style, I'd be happy to train again (haven't, since moving away from the Dojo).

1) American Karate2) Yes; it starts about 3 weeks into each 3 month session.3) Officially, we're light contact only, but as rank goes up, it gets more toward medium. If you want to go full on, most of the black belts are happy to comply. Control is heavily emphasized. We use head guards (required up to brown belt in class; up to black belt in tournaments), hand and foot pads. Face shields are required up to brown belt in tournaments. Groin and face are legal target areas, in addition to all the other usual ones.

Stac3y (purple belt, American Karate--testing for brown in February if my stupid ankle heals!)

In my last dojo, boxing head gear, chest protector, gloves, and foot gear were required. Most of us opted for shin guards as well. Contact was medium, but if you wanted to take it up a notch, most people didn't complain. Control was emphasized and a lack of control was usually met with a "lesson".

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The angry man will defeat himself in battle, as well as in life. -Samurai maxim